Thursday, October 20, 2011

Title.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be traveling in the panhandle of Texas and had the chance to stay with my brother and sister-in-law. My brother was actually one of the people in charge of setting up and running the college fair I was working, so we both got to see each other in action that night.

After the fair was over, he had a few things to wrap up before leaving for the night, so I stopped by a fast food place and picked up dinner for all of us and planned to meet up at the house.

Most of the time, I try to be a patient person when it comes to fast food places. I don't always succeed, but at least on this night, I was laughing about the things that were going wrong. The worker typed in the wrong meal and the machine froze up and wouldn't let them clear it out. They ran out of fries right before I got there. Chicken nuggets that were taking a while to cook... err, fry, I guess. Needless to say, I had quite a few minutes that I was standing there waiting on my food. No one else was in the restaurant at the late hour, so it lead to a little chit chat between me and two of the employees.

One happened to walk up and start staring at my shirt and finally said, "What does your name tag say?" I looked down, having forgotten that I even had it on, and quickly brushed over it: "Oh this thing. It says Admissions Consultant. It's a really weird, confusing title. I'm a college recruiter but they make it sound a lot fancier this way."

I really can't remember everything else they said after that about my name tag, but there's one line that stands out:

"At least you have a title."

Yeesh. Such a simple statement, but it really took my breath away.

Sometimes I forget just how privileged I am.

In my circle of friends, we're all educated. We have good jobs that provide for us. Even if we tease about being poor, we're not going without. I'm 27 and own a home and have nice cars. I am a privileged person, yet I probably complain more often than I recognize my blessings.

I have a title.

I'm not sure what your title is right now or what exactly you're going through, but I would encourage you to stop and look around... you never know where you'll be when you end up seeing your blessings!